Naming issues is among the two arduous issues in pc science, and Swift 6 has a “naming issues” downside in the mean time.
We’ve been repeatedly instructed that Swift 6 will embody some modifications that break supply compatibility with Swift 5.x. That makes good sense, in fact. That’s what a significant semantic model ought to be used for. Up to now so good. 👍
However what I stated there doesn’t give the entire image, and that’s the place the naming downside is available in. There’s the Swift 6 compiler, after which there’s “Swift 6 language mode”, and you’ll undertake the Swift 6 compiler with out adopting the language mode. All of the strict concurrency checks and information race security options are within the language mode, and that brings the breaking modifications.
You can begin utilizing the Swift 6 compiler now (or extra seemingly when it makes it to a beta/launch model of Xcode) after which opt-in to the language mode while you really feel like tackling the breaking modifications. There’s no imminent deadline respiration down your neck.
None of that is new information. The language mode has been talked about for a very long time, however the distinction is refined and it handed me by till just lately, and it’s possible you’ll be in the identical state of affairs.
A significantly better particular person to speak about this is able to be Holly Borla, supervisor of the Swift Compiler Group, and it simply so occurs we just lately had her as a visitor on the Swift Package deal Indexing podcast. It was a pleasure to speak to Holly, and we coated this subject in depth as one among a number of Swift 6 subjects.
When you don’t already subscribe to the podcast give this episode a hear and think about hitting that subscribe or comply with button in your podcast participant. We speak about Swift (together with server-side), the event of the Swift Package deal Index undertaking, and package deal ecosystem subjects. We additionally spotlight a number of community-written packages in each episode. Give it a strive!
Dave Verwer 
